OpenAI's Chief Futurist Joshua Achiam Departs After Nine Years

Joshua Achiam, OpenAI’s chief futurist and one of its longest-serving safety researchers, announced Tuesday that he will leave at the end of July — ending a nearly nine-year run at the AI company.

Achiam joined OpenAI in 2017, back when the organization was still operating as a nonprofit research lab. He went on to co-author the GPT-4 technical report and became a core voice inside the company on AI safety, long-term risk, and public policy. His departure is not tied to any single event, he said, but was a decision he arrived at after long reflection.

“I still believe humanity can move toward a more peaceful, more prosperous future with greater social and scientific possibility,” Achiam wrote in his announcement. He said that now that the world has “fully awakened” to AI’s potential, he feels he can continue contributing to that mission even outside a frontier lab.

Achiam, 34, was part of OpenAI’s Mission Alignment Team before the group was dissolved in a February restructuring. The company then created the chief futurist role specifically for him — a position focused on studying the long-term risks, benefits, and policy implications of advanced AI. The role effectively bridged the company’s safety research and its public policy work.

His departure is the latest in a long line of high-profile exits from OpenAI’s safety and policy teams. While some former researchers have gone public with criticism of the company’s direction, Achiam’s tone was notably measured. He described his time at the company as a “graduation” and said he plans to continue working on AI from outside the industry’s top labs.

OpenAI has not said whether it will fill the chief futurist position. The company faces growing pressure from regulators in the US, EU, and China, and losing a senior voice on long-term policy could reshape how it engages with governments around the world.